Caroline Shaw, “Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief” (Oxford UP, 2015)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Feb 16, 2016 · 1h 20m

Published in October 2015, Caroline Shaw‘s timely new book, Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (Oxford University Press, 2015), traces the intertwined development of the category of refugee and of the moral commitment of Britons to providing refuge for persecuted foreigners. By confidently working across a range of methods and geopolitical contexts, Shaw shows how the refugee category became “potentially universal in scope,” thanks to the depth of this moral commitment. Yet the attendant challenges of providing relief and resettlement for a…